FeedDemon was the first RSS reader I ever used, back in 2004.
I really liked it, but it felt so disconnected. I moved to NewsGator because I wanted an automatic blogroll, a mobile application, and I wanted it to be all synced up.
Then, after Newsgator acquired FeedDemon and got things all synced up, I just didn't want to pay for it.
I did pay for NewsGator Mobile, which I love, but I wasn't willing to pay anything for synced destop software. Despite improvements to the interface, I still didn't really love Newsgator Online, nor did I love being unable to read feeds on my laptop while offline.
Last week, Newsgator took the pricetags off and went free.
Not surprisingly, they're also supporting APML, which means that they're going after the data. I always felt like the feed reading folks were in a unique position to see who was paying attention to what (as is FeedBurner) and build interesting applications on top of that. For example, I can't wait to use their list of feeds I pay the most attention to. Going free and building up attention data: not only very Web 2.0, but also so much more useful to me.
This is a major step in my continuing quest to bring stuff back out of the browser and onto my desktop in a way that is still synced to my phone. First, I successfully brought all my Gmail/Gcal functionality out of the browser and enable phone syncing through a combo of Thunderbird and other apps. Now I'll be able to read feeds offline but also sync those feeds to my phone. That's great because the browser, thus far, doesn't seem like it's a place to efficiently run things that need applications. I've also started using the GTalk client and never got much use out of Meebo.
Now if I could only manage edit/upload/manage videos in a connected client. Phanfare doesn't have editing.
Hats off to the Newsgator team!
Blogged with Flock